“Negative.” Jessie said in a flat tone. “I killed them all.”
There was a long silence then his dad come on.
“Jester, are you all right? How’s Scarlet?”
Jessie closed his eyes and fought away the tears that threatened to come again.
“She’s gone.” He said.
“Son, you should come on home.” His dad said after a pause. “The wars are over and your mom would really like to see you. It’s been a while.”
“Soon.” Jessie said. “There’s one more thing I need to do.”
He flipped the radio off, he didn’t want to talk anymore, and placed his forehead against Bob’s for a moment before he stood.
“Come on, boy. We’ve got some unfinished business to take care of.”
2
Unfinished Business
Jessie kept his anger in check as he repacked everything but below the calm was a simmering rage. All the effort and energy he’d focused on getting back to her was now concentrated on the man who had taken her away from him. As he tossed everything back inside, a book tumbled out of a rucksack. It was one of Scarlets endless travel guides and fell open to an earmarked page. It was a write up about Split Rock lighthouse on Lake Superior a few hundred miles north. On the drive across the country when she had been getting sicker by the hour, when the poisonous black runners were racing across her skin, they spoke of what they would do after it was finished. She wanted to take a month off, to spend a night up in the lantern room during a storm and listen to the waves crash against the rocks below. They’d talked quietly as the tires sang on the pavement. They made plans and dreamed dreams about what they would do after they defeated the Anubis cult. After Doctor Stevens cured her.
He slid the book between the seats by the shifter. It would be a reminder that after this was over, he was going to take that vacation. He was going to relax and do nothing. Before he left town, he retrieved the computers and the few remaining vials of the super soldier serums he had stashed away in the hospital. He knew a better place to hide them now if he ever needed them again. They would be safe deep under the mountain.
Jessie touched the battered locket still hanging around his neck for luck, fired up the Mercury and revved the motor. It echoed through the buildings and undead shamblers turned towards the sound. He raced away from the smoldering ruins of the Anubis building and aimed for the graying things gnashing their teeth at him. He slammed them, sent bodies tumbling and black blood sprayed across the windshield. He drove in a quiet fury, arm resting on the window sill and aimed for them. The oversized tires crushed the mindless husks, sent splashes of intestines across the asphalt. When a group came stumbling out an alley after him, he slammed on the brakes and threw it in reverse. White smoke rolled from the squalling tires as he floored it, ran the tach up to the redline and aimed the back bumper for them. Body parts flew as corpses exploded and covered the car with gore. He didn’t care. He wanted to kill every single last stinking one of them.
Jessie drove angry.
He drove hard and he drove fast and he didn’t avoid the undead when he saw them. He cut them down. He only stopped to refuel and to make a bottle of trucker’s speed. He pushed the old car, didn’t slow and didn’t sleep. He sipped the bitter concoction to keep him awake and nursed the black hatred that coiled around his heart. Day turned into night and he chased his headlights across the plains. The sun came up behind him and illuminated the mountains as he twisted through Oregon.
The voice in his head, the one demanding vengeance, drove him onward. It gave him purpose, replacing what had consumed him for years. He was no longer spending every waking moment calculating jump points then launching himself across time to see if he got it right. It had been drudgery hunting for her but once he started, he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t rest. If he hadn’t had Maddy to repair him, nurse him back to health and give him strength, he would have died long ago. Anger at losing her drove him on, too. If he couldn’t be with Scarlet, then he knew he’d never be with anyone else. No other woman could compare, they all fell short and he had nothing to look forward to except a lifetime of emptiness. But for now, he had his rage. He had his need to destroy the man who had taken everything from him. It was enough.
His mind tortured him, made him second himself. Maybe he should have let her die. Maybe he should have jumped and tried again. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent so much time in Ohio, he should have dove in the water and fought the waterlogged dead instead of spending a week battling his way out of Cleveland.
When he pulled into the parking lot at the Tower there were a few dozen retriever cars lined up and a somber group of women were placing stones on the hill top that overlooked the river. The Friends of Scarlet. He shook his head; word had traveled fast. There was loud music, people dancing, a raucous party and sporadic fireworks being shot off from the plaza level. They, like all the rest of the towns in the territories, were celebrating the end of the wars. The undead that surrounded the building were in a frenzy but they’d never get past the steel shutters. Maybe they’d stomp themselves to death trying to climb over each other to get closer.
Not many of the zombies made their way to the parking lot side of the river. There were no roads, only the gravel one the retrievers and truckers used,
